The Cardigan Progression
by April in Paris
Summary: It wasn't as though he was trying to memorize her cardigans. It was just that because of his eidetic memory he couldn't help but remember them all. It wasn't that it mattered what Amy wore, anyway. He only liked her on an intellectual level, for her mind. It wasn't as though he loved her cardigans, just as he did not love Amy.


**The Cardigan Progression**

It wasn't as though he was trying to memorize her cardigans. It was just that because of his eidetic memory he couldn't help but remember them all. It wasn't that it mattered what Amy wore, anyway. He only liked her on an intellectual level, for her mind. It wasn't as though he loved her cardigans, just as he did not love Amy.

When Sheldon Lee Cooper first met Amy Farrah Fowler, she was wearing a cardigan that was deep purple and striped. It was dark and obscuring, and it reminded him of a Romulan warbird when it cloaks and just a wavy shadow remains in space. Even though Amy was blunt and direct, he couldn't help looking over at her as they stood at the counter, wondering if there were wavy shadows in her mind.

On their first official "date," the cardigan was brown striped. Its somberness contrasted with her sparkling dialogue over dinner. He saw her in a new light, although he knew it was just because he hadn't actually seen her in four months.

She didn't wear a cardigan when he brought her to see his work. She wore a magenta blazer. Sheldon hated her, truly hated her, at that lunch, when she spouted all those ridiculous hypotheses about why neuroscience was better than physics. Ipso facto, indeed. He didn't need her and her stupid cardigans in his life.

It was blue and gray striped after his mother told him he was pining for her, which was preposterous, of course. The only thing this cardigan made him pine for was the silver outer hull of The Enterprise and the way the nacelles lit up bright blue just before it went to warp. The pause before the universe ran away with you aboard, powerless to stop it.

Amy waited in the stairwell for him the day Leonard told him he was attached to another object by an incline plane wrapped helically around an axis. She wasn't wearing a cardigan again. Sheldon felt a new heat talking to her, but that was because of the parka he was wearing. Why on earth did Leonard think he was screwed?

It was her lab coat, of course, that she was wearing when she told him of her strange symptoms around Zach. And then she had the nerve to accuse him of being jealous! As if that was even possible. He was grateful when Penny explained the situation to him, explained that all he had to do was take Amy to see Zach so that she could release her urges, and then everything would go away and be normal again. So he did. As he watched Amy from across the bar, he had the oddest sensation that maybe he had misunderstood Penny.

Blue stripes were what she wore when she proposed an experiment in rumors. It reminded him of the ocean and the sound of waves. He supposed it was this memory of tranquility that lulled him into a sense of calm, and he mistakenly called her a vixen.

The most fascinating cardigan was the one she wore the night they went dancing. It had too many colors, and it confused and distracted Sheldon. Amy was so strange that night, and he couldn't figure out what had happened to her, why he didn't know her as well as he thought he did. Although he danced with her merely to prove his prowess, she somehow thought it was some sort of mating ritual; and she attempted to prolong it by kissing him when he walked her home. He was relieved that her inebriated state made her forget the events of the evening, so there would never be any proof that he enjoyed dancing with her. Or that he may have puckered his lips also. The cardigan had confused and fascinated him at the same time.

He didn't know what, exactly, women called the outfit she wore to the wedding she attended with Leonard (dress? suit?), but he knew it wasn't a cardigan. For some reason, this absence of cardigan pleased him. Inexplicably, he did know with certainty that her cardigans were not for Leonard.

The first time she attempted to negotiate more than just a relationship of the mind, the cardigan was evergreen, like the tree. As he held her in his arms, he found the awkwardness fading and the expression 'couldn't see the forest through the trees' came unexpectedly to his mind. He couldn't understand why. He was so relieved to find her safe at home he didn't dwell on it.

The blue striped cardigan was back again when she went to the comic book store with him. Again, he found it calming, perhaps even more so this time because she was with him in one of his favorite places. He was so calm he didn't notice how much she was talking to Stuart. And it kept calming even later that evening, when Leonard told him that Stuart wanted to ask Amy out. The question was so moot he didn't even consider it. He was calm.

The next evening, though, after the card game with his friends, Sheldon started to feel an odd uneasiness, like when he was in his bedroom but could feel someone else sitting in his spot. To be safe, he sat in his spot for hours after they left, but the feeling didn't go away. He wondered if something had changed and if he actually really like liked Amy, to use the vernacular of his childhood. Because he knew he didn't love her, he could never love a woman who was not his mother or his Mee-Maw. The uneasiness grew and finally he decided that even though it would never be love, if he like liked a woman then he certainly couldn't have someone else like liking her and her cardigans, too.

She wore purple stripes again when he found her at the movies with Stuart, but they were wider and brighter than before. He supposed this was appropriate as he was altering the paradigm of their relationship. The hues of the cardigan were shifted from when he first met her, but it was still purple. He took that as a reassuring sign that nothing would change what so ever. Once this illogical little crush passed as quickly as it have arrived.

The drab brown cardigan reappeared when he gave her the tiara. Again, it contrasted with the sparkle in the room, although this time the sparkle came from her eyes. She kissed and hugged him again, and he was actually relieved because it kept her from asking why a tiara. Somehow, even though he thought jewelry was a stupid idea, the moment he saw the tiara he knew that only a tiara would do for Wonder Woman. He couldn't quite explain it.

Later, he would blame it on how long his hair was. Hippies did crazy things all the time. It was his hippy hair that made him go to Amy's apartment with bongos in the middle of the night. It was so late she wasn't wearing a cardigan anymore. For once, he was grateful. Who knew what the combination of hippy hair and her cardigan would have made him do.

Amy didn't wear a cardigan when she came to him dressed as Nurse Chapel. Instead, for the first time, Sheldon noticed her waist, and how her waist curved gently down into her hips and her . . . posterior. She didn't wear a cardigan, and he was in hell. He never wanted it to stop.

When Howard flew into space, Amy wore the same cardigan she wore the night she became his girlfriend. Purple and gray. Once again, he found it reassuring. Oddly, not as reassuring as he found her hand.

Evergreen, that evergreen cardigan returned for their anniversary date night. He was really starting to dislike that cardigan. It made him say and do things he never planned on saying or doing. Why did he tell her that he needed her? He was pleased that he was able to save himself so quickly after that comment. Except that seemed to make Amy angry. So he found himself reciting the words from _Spiderman_ that had been running through his head a lot lately, although he didn't understand why. Darn evergreen cardigan.

Everything was different and strange at the movies. First of all, Stuart was there instead of Howard, and Sheldon didn't like it. Secondly, Amy was wearing a yellow cardigan he had never seen before, and she wore it buttoned all the way up. Why? He tried to relieve his frustrations by talking about the things he hated. He was just about to add how much he hated holding her hand, but then he noticed how warm and soft and small her hand was; he changed his words at the last minute. "Not a fan." Fan as in fanatic as in sports enthusiast; he obviously was not going to paint his face blue and go shirtless for Amy. Fanatic as in devotee or addict. He obviously was not addicted to Amy. He was confident she would understand this.

Of course, she didn't wear a cardigan when she was sick. She wore a nightgown, which was logical. He didn't notice or care, he was too busy fulfilling his duties as outlined in The Relationship Agreement. But then he found out she wasn't sick and had lied to him, and he had to punish her for that. It was when his hand made a satisfying whack against her firm and round posterior, that he became aware of the lack of cardigan. He was in hell all over again.

Unfortunately, he couldn't see what cardigan she was wearing the day he and his friends heard her discussing comic books behind a closed door. Suddenly, that terrible day was not so terrible anymore. Every fiber of his android being quavered in anticipation of opening that door and seeing her cardigan. Set phasers to stun.

The cardigan was bright blue when he cried in front of her. The cheerful color was so incongruent with his feelings. Kripke's research was light years ahead of his, and the pain was unbearable. He allowed her to hug him, and that felt contradictory, too, both like a vise and a lifeline. He held onto that lifeline for dear life.

Later, when he was alone, he thought about the possibility he felt in that hug.

Danger, danger, it flashed in brilliant red the day Amy used a series of logical arguments he couldn't refute. There wasn't one rational reason that her idea of moving in with him was bad. Danger, danger, it was the color of terror. Because if it wasn't a problem of the mind, then it had to be a problem of the heart. And a_ homo novus_ shouldn't have problems of the heart.

She called him a coward and yelled at him that she was the best girlfriend he'd ever have. Her cardigan was pink and black and angry, too. Ever word she screamed was true. She had done everything right, everything just the way he liked it, and that made him feel even more cowardly.

It was a greenish color when she gave him the best Valentine's Day for which he could ever hope. It had been an emergency of fear all day, but she had fixed everything. It proved to him he had made the right decision.

Snow White never wore a cardigan. Snow White wore too much make-up. Snow White didn't have green eyes. Snow White didn't drink tea. Snow White wasn't a neurobiologist. Snow White wasn't a genius. Why on Earth would he ever want to kiss Snow White?

It was the color of moss when they played Dungeons and Dragons. It was the same color as the secluded spot that his elfin magic user lead her half-orc warrior before he removed her armor and erotically caressed her. Later, when he couldn't fall asleep for thinking about it (and thinking about it and thinking about it and . . .), that was the only logical reason he could think of for what they'd done. It was only the power of suggestion from Amy's apparently mind-altering cardigan.

Finally, it was striped again, greens and yellows, full of happiness. He could feel her weight on his arm and her breath on his ear as they listened at Penny's door. Why didn't Amy wear happy striped cardigans very often anymore?

He really hated that evergreen cardigan. She always wore it when she managed to get the upper hand. How dare she allow that cardigan to ruin _Raiders of the Lost Ark_ for him? And how dare she allow that cardigan to be correct?

Amy was already in her nightgown by the time he came to her apartment to apologize, his hands filled with mutton in coconut milk. No cardigan. He didn't know what else she could possibly want from him. He'd brought his flame to her moth, he'd introduced himself as her boyfriend, and he'd even used a term of endearment to remind her she was his cute little lump of wool. The lack of cardigan was always confusing to him, so he had ended up saying more than he meant to say. He had talked about his feelings, of all things; how relationships were hard and they were couple and then he'd even admitted how much he liked her, as much as he liked all those sub-atomic particles in string theory that were spelled differently but pronounced almost the same. But she shut her door in his face, and he was in a completely different type of hell.

It was purple when she told him that she wasn't proud of him. At first, he was stunned but then oddly relieved. Amy wasn't going to accept less than mental perfection from him. For a moment he wanted nothing more than to run away with her to his tree fort, rest his head next to hers on that cardigan, and stay there forever with her perfect mind.

On Thanksgiving, it was the color of eggplants. He thought. The details were a little fuzzy. Did he really allow himself to slap her wonderful backside again? And to think, he didn't even like eggplant.

She wore an olive green blazer when he came back from Texas. She wanted to know if he missed her. He told her the truth of that moment. Because he had not missed the blazer-wearing Amy. Surely she would understand the critical difference.

The damn evergreen cardigan was back on the trip to Napa Valley. Its cabled lines shuddered in front of him like an optokinetic drum, enraging him. How dare she trick him into romance? Well, if she wanted romance, he'd give her romance. He kissed her in anger, but then he suddenly saw the forest, cool and soft and sheltering, the forest that had been hiding behind the trees all along. He put his hands on that cardigan he hated; it was itchy just like he always thought it would be. But it was itchy like something he was dying to scratch, and the relief of finally scratching it was overpowering. It took all of his willpower to break away.

She didn't wear a cardigan at all the week he couldn't decide on a gaming system. He blamed his indecision on this change. Also, he noticed that she wasn't wearing tights. If she had been wearing a cardigan, he would not have noticed her legs. He blamed her for this change, too.

It was pink and maroon when he discovered she had lied to him. He felt hurt that she had lied, and that she was not taking his career dilemma seriously. Then Penny took him to see a physic, of all things, who spouted a bunch of malarkey. It was a horrible day, and it was the last time he allowed himself to look at her cardigan. Her cardigan that looked like her heart.

Sheldon didn't know what cardigan Amy was wearing the day it all fell apart. Not because he didn't remember, of course, but because he was still choosing not to look. He went to her for support, for her to say the right thing, to tell him she would make everything the way it used to be, and it would all be okay. But instead she told him things he didn't want to hear, even if they were true. Even if the strawberry Qwik tasted better, he didn't want to see if everything else she said would also be better. He knew on some level that if he looked at her and her cardigan he would see and if he would see he would know. He didn't want to know, to actually admit, what he felt about Amy, and so he had not-quite-subconsciously chosen not to look.

Now that he was watching the country rolling by out the window, he wished he had looked. Every day for the past four months, he regretted not looking. Every day, he regretted not saying good-bye. Every day, he regretted all those hurtful things he had said for a couple of years now, just to hide his fear. Every day, he had shed a layer of that fear.

Out of the corner of his eye there was movement and a series of purple stripes entered his visual field. His heart stopped beating.

"Is this seat taken?" she asked.

But it wasn't Amy in that purple striped cardigan. It was another woman, with red hair and long legs and no glasses. He shook his head and gestured for the stranger to sit, before he turned back to the window and swallowed a sob.

It wasn't as though he had memorized her cardigans. It was just that because of his eidetic memory he couldn't help but remember them all. It wasn't that it mattered what Amy wore, anyway. He loved her on every level, for her mind and her heart and her soul. It wasn't as though he loved her cardigans for themselves, it was just that they shrouded the Amy he loved so much.

He was going back to her. He was going back to apologize. He was going back to win her heart the way he should have been all along. He was going back to her to tell her he loved her, and his greatest wish is that she would open her cardigan and he could crawl inside of it with her and never leave again.

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_**AN: Thanks for reading! This is my first true one-shot, so all reviews are appreciated. As always, I don't own Sheldon and Amy although they may own me.**_


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